Sinister

Reviewed by Ed Gibbs

What happened to Ethan Hawke, the former Gen X darling and star of the 1994 ensemble piece Reality Bites? Well may you ask. Mainstream Hollywood has never quite made the most of the Austin, Texas, native, whose name became commonly associated with celebrity fodder owing to his one-time marriage to Uma Thurman.

Oddball arthouse fare has been his bent of late, and this outing offers little to shift that. Before Australia sees the long-awaited Before Midnight, the third in a warmly received series featuring Hawke and Julie Delpy as mismatched lovers, there's this rather ho-hum horror from the man who brought us The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a crime writer who discovers a stash of home movies that threatens the lives of his family. It begins with grisly Super 8 footage showing a family of four about to be killed by a suitably deranged (but unseen) figure. Months later, Oswalt moves his family into the house where the victims used to live. He is using it as a research device to try to uncover what happened to the fifth member of the family, a young girl. Having viewed the gruesome home videos, one involving drownings (which an apparently demonic figure observes from under the water) catches his eye. Oswalt soon discovers a thread linking this to the other apparent ''snuff'' films in the grim collection.

Were it not for the solid cast - in particular Hawke, who remains an engaging presence on screen - Scott Derrickson's film could be dismissed as unpleasant home-video horror best left for late-night examination. Yet Hawke brings a gravitas to the role of parent and home protector that is of far greater interest. True, he's hardly stretched by the material, but we're kept fearing that this is scary stuff.

That it may look familiar is down to Derrickson's vivid imagination and ongoing visual homage to the horrors of yore. William Friedkin's The Exorcist casts a long, dark shadow on all who seek to replicate that film's sense of dread. This is, unsurprisingly, no different. In addition to Hawke's solid performance, the device of the Super 8 videos as malignant tools harbouring (or at least involving) a malevolent force strikes a chord. It's hackneyed as all hell, of course, as much modern horror is. But this is far from the turkey some would have you believe.